Tyranosaurus and its Victim

I’m going to be very candid and tell you I don’t get it right all the time. Last week I received a call from someone I wouldn’t ordinarily be receiving a call early Sunday morning but he asked me if I had seen the papers and I hadn’t what I read horrified me and it took me back to losing my wife who took her life fifteen years ago.

In many respects this incident was worse because it involved a child where a crime had been committed. Why I and the person who had called me found it difficult to contemplate was because the person who committed the crime was known to both of us.

However, for me it was far more personal. This was a friend whom I had respected the many years I had known him and admired him because he seemed to get on with his life. Not involve himself in other people’s affairs who would never hurt a fly and dedicated to everything he wanted out of life including having children and going through parenthood. During out friendship that spanned a good three decades we had been supportive to each others needs. Earlier on it was me offering him support and later on he reciprocated. Our friendship was perfect, it was transparent with no hidden agenda’s or surprises.

More recently I hadn’t spoken with him but this had more that I knew he was a very private person and spent time with his young family.

Then something out of the ordinary occurred, news that punched every ounce of air out of my lungs. My coping mechanism didn’t have a strategy for what I read and suddenly I was thrown into a state of anxiety that I am yet to recover completely from.

Although I am not at liberty to discuss the circumstances other than say he had committed a crime and the victim was very much younger.

My only way of making a comparison to the type of anxiety what he did caused is to mention the following chapters in my book, both of the words in these will give you an indication of the severity of the anxiety. For the first time in my life I wandered over to my GP and asked for medication to help.

My Book Aspie and Me is based on my and Aspie’s true life experiences. When in anxiety mode it is Aspie who has taken control and when he has taken total control as he had during these two occasions, I have to hope I will survive is the excessiveness of the anxiety. See my book Aspie and Me; chapter 33 Schadenfreudes page 297. Had I not been able to regain control of the anxiety I would hope at worst best Aspie would get off scot free, although I imagine the court case would have been a complex one.

Most certainly it wasn’t the case that Aspie wanted to culpably murder in this instance, what he wanted was a stop to the goading my ‘girlfriend was initiating’. This was a very stressful relationship I was in. I had gone into it wholeheartedly with genuine interest. However after while I became aware she had a drink problem often returning home intoxicated and what flowed from her mouth was a tsunami or gibberish.

She craved attention to such an intrusive degree I found myself being smothered often unable to get a word in. She was also abusing her dog that had taken interest in me. So many fond memories I was wondering how I was going to leave the relationship with my dignity intact and be aware her dog would be safe. The fact of the matter I wasn’t offered the chance for this assurance. It was Aspie who reacted badly. The constant reverberation in her voice was cutting deep into his chest. Pleading with her that he loved her buit asking for some peace of mind that was not forthcoming. She wasn’t listening, ; “please please stop talking I as much as I love you I cannot take any more, the expression on your face is causing a T-Rex of an anxiety”. But as you know Tsunami’s don’t or rather can’t stop just like that.

By now Aspie was in control, picked her up by the neck and began shaking her as his hands gripped her neck as hard as he possibly could, she was smiling but also quite shocked, hadn’t expected his reaction, but there was no screaming, it was as though in a weird way she was enjoying getting the attention even though her life was ebbing out of her. It would be only a matter of a few seconds more and Aspie would have won the day and her lifeless body would have been lying contorted on the floor. Thankfully Me was able to step in.

I had read in the paper of an anxiety that had taken over my friend’s mind. In his scenario, it was his Aspie who remained in control until the bitter end, or did it, that I may never know.

This was a friend I just wished could have opened up to me about his mental distress not wait till it was too late.

Getting back to why I am so sensitive to such terrible news is because of Alexithymia. Somehow Alexithymia draws me inside of his head and I feel the full force of whatever fate had in store for the outcome of his anxiety.